Meanwhile, in NYC there are plenty of options for "hourly" hotels that get you a room for 2-3 hours for 50-60 dollars, which is about the rate of Breather.
Though, uh, as Ian Malcom put it in Jurassic Park: "Life finds a way"
I was intern at research facility that had this story as part of the local folklore: male researcher and female researcher stayed the night to supervise long-lasting experiment, fire inspector was doing rounds and walked upon them having sex. He reported this to the director of the facility. Director said "I don't see how fire safety was affected" and dismissed the complaint.
At first, by reading the title, I thought it was about making flights more comfortable. I really would like to see planes where instead of selling 200 seats at $500 each, they sell 100 seats at $1000 with double leg room and bigger seats. Or even 50 mega seats at $2000 each.
First class seats go for 10k a pop which makes them really expensive only affordable by big corporations. So something in the middle may be a good thing to explore.
Can a group of entrepreneurs buy a plane an make a direct flight JFK-LAX with just 50 seats and still make a profit?
Having said this I do think the airline industry has managed to get itself stuck in a non-optimal local maximum that could be broken out of with some intelligent regulation.
I too try to get business class on anything above maybe 6 hours and certainly on overnight flights, but I think you'd have to be pretty rich to not flinch at spending 2x or 4x your normal fare just to sit in a larger seat for a couple of hours on a domestic flight.
(1) http://www.singaporeair.com/en_UK/flying-with-us/business-li...
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-25/singapore-air-to-en...
Most airlines have an "Economy Plus" type class nowadays, which is usually economy-style seating with more legroom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium_economy
The main challenge I can think of is related to getting access to the space. With this kind of service I would not be interested in making appointments with somebody to get access to the place. Too much trouble if I only plan to spend couple of hours there.
Would be also easy to tie additional services to the experience. If there's some catering services available at the location, those could be made available via the app. Book a room and request a light lunch delivered there.
And of course these could also expand to airports. With some good design one could probably fit in a decent room in pretty small place. Knowing that I have my personal space booked at the airport, I could actually go there a little bit earlier instead of trying to kill the time at the city.
You mean things like http://www.yotel.com/ ? ;-)
I think I last saw them at YVR (Vancouver).
Very much not "your" space.
I'd love something like this in London. I live about 2.5 hours out of London, and when I come in for client meetings or on-sites having somewhere to decompress for a couple of hours, grab a shower and a nap, and get some work done in the quiet, would be fantastic.
I still don't like taking on the inventory risk.
I think they limit it to 10-12 hours per day in their schedule (as they limit the days to during the week). I'm just making an assumption about their occupancy rate - could be higher or lower.
(I was just starting a fledgling business)These clubs put you into a community. When my father-in-law comes to visit he usually goes to the American Legion down the street, that's his Breather spot. My dad would visit other Lions clubs when he was travelling out of town.
I'd suggest looking into how clubs operate. When I travel I would really like to have something between AirBNB and the Moose Lodge. Something that is...
1) Members only. It's a casual membership that includes a yearly fee to weed out people that are likely to trash the place.
2) Open to multiple members. This might be contradictory to where they are going but as a traveller I don't mind a few other travellers around me. I just don't want to be in a coffee house. I could stand 3 or 4 other people if there was enough room. Instead of saying "You are blocking off this room for X hours" make it an option. If you want exclusive privacy then you must rent the room for a minimum of 4 hours @ $25 an hour. Otherwise it's first-come-first-serve with a limit of X people depending on size. The more members the lower the hourly rate (spread it between them).
Neat idea.